The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power by Daniel Yergin

The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power is Daniel Yergin's 800-page history of the global oil industry from the 1850s through 1990. The Prize benefited from extraordinary timing: published in October 1990, two months after the invasion of Kuwait ordered by Saddam Hussein and three months before the U.S.-led coalition unleashed the Gulf War to oust Iraqi troops from that country, the book's theme of the historical centrality of what its subtitle calls "the epic quest for oil, money, and power" was in tune with the zeitgeist; the book became a number-one bestseller in the United States and won a Pulitzer Prize. The Prize has been called the "definitive" history of the oil industry, even a "bible"; some critics, though, consider the book too sympathetic to the perspective of the oil industry, of which the author is, in a way, a part. The Prize was the basis for a six hour documentary television series titled "The Prize - The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, & Power", narrated by Donald Sutherland. The series is frequently used as a source material in Middle Eastern studies classes and is said to have been seen by 20 million people in the United States.